America: The Nervous Breakdown Continues

The 2023 elections continued a winning streak for Democrats that began with Joe Biden's 2020 presidential election victory and continued with the midterm results of 2022.  Andy Beshear was re-elected governor of Kentucky, Democrats won both houses of Virginia's legislature and expanded their majorities in the houses of the New Jersey state legislature, and abortion rights were enshrined in the state constitution in Ohio.  Many people think the MAGA movement is in retreat at the polls.  Don't you believe it.

The Republicans still have the advantage going into 2024.  Forget the polls that show Trump ahead of Biden, and forget especially the greater number of polls that show Biden ahead of Trump, which Biden himself alluded in a testy exchange with a "reporter" from Fox "News."   Here are the basic reasons why 2024 is still in tap to be a Republican year:

• Democrats face strong headwinds to keep their Senate majority.
• U.S. House districts are still gerrymandered. 
• Many voter-suppression laws remain on the books.  
• Voter turnout in off-year elections is low and cannot be used as an effective barometer for midterm or presidential elections.
• The Electoral College can still negate the will of the people if they pick a Democratic President, as the 2016 election so clearly proved.
• Support for abortion rights in Republican states like Ohio do not automatically translate into support for Democratic candidates in statewide elections.

Change these conditions, and the Democratic Party's fortunes can improve.  But as such changes are not likely to happen, even the rosiest outlook on the economy might not save Biden this time.

And there's not just the threat of a third-party candidate playing the role of spoiler to help Trump.  There's the threat of four of them.  Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is now a leading choice among young voters, and his anti-Semitic and anti-vaccine comments haven't hurt him as an independent candidate.  His appeal among young people might actually hurt Biden.  Cornel West has quit as the Green Party presidential nominee and continued to run as an independent, while Jill Stein - yes, the same Jill Stein who was the Green Party presidential nominee in 2016 and failed to win a 5 percent minimum of the vote to qualify the Green Party for matching funds in the 2020 presidential election - is taking his place on the Green ticket.  And the No Labels movement, which has promised to run a bipartisan presidential/vice presidential ticket, might have a presidential nominee in waiting in the form of Joe Manchin.

The senior senator from West Virginia announced that he will not seek re-election in 2024 and plans to tour the country to listen to voters needs - an obvious precursor to a presidential run, and possible as the No Labels candidate.  To be fair, No Labels' director, former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman, has said that No Labels will not field a presidential ticket if researching and polling show that such a ticket would help Trump, but there will still be at least three other presidential candidates on the ballot who could and probably will screw things up for Joe Biden.

At least.  There could be more candidates.  Some people are still talking about Oprah Winfrey for President, while others are talking about her as a vice presidential No Labels candidate.  And still, waiting in the wings, and being taken very seriously, even by esteemed newsmen such as CNN's Jake Tapper, is Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

Oh, honey, I think America is having a nervous breakdown like you wouldn't believe! 

Oh yeah, in Mississippi, Democrat Brandon Presley - a distant cousin of Elvis - lost his bid for the state's governorship to incumbent Republican Tate Reeves despite Reeves being tainted by scandal.  Brandon has just left the building.  Another Brandon is likely to leave the White House a year and change from now.

What a Difference a Week Makes

Joe Biden's Presidency seemed to be cratering this time last week.  Now it has new life.

President Biden had what pundits would call "a good week," and though I'd rather not use the language of a bunch of professional opinion givers trying to create a narrative for the news, I have to admit that the past seven days have been a streak of good luck for the President when he really needs it - especially when we seem to be teetering on the verge of a recession and COVID hasn't been licked yet.  (This coming winter, it may lick us again, like it's done in the past two winters.)  Biden himself recovered from COVID (though he's since had a relapse), Congress passed an important bill promoting semiconductor chip manufacturing in the United States, and a new spending agreement was announced by Senate Democrats.  That bill, to be passed by the Democrats in reconciliation, also includes provisions to allow Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices while spending more on incentives to encourage renewable energy and electric vehicles - made possible after West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin cut a deal with Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer.  Gee, what made him change his mind about climate legislation?

You think it may have had something to do with the record flooding his home state is experiencing?

Actually, Manchin got some fossil-fuel exploration incentives added to the bill.  To those environmentalists who have a problem with that, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good!

There are a still a few hurdles that even Edwin Moses would have trouble clearing.  Arizona Democrat Kyrsten Sinema still wants to to red the bill, and if she has a problem with the bill and lets the perfect become the enemy of the good,  failed 2020 Senate Democratic candidates Theresa Greenfield and Cal Cunningham will hear their names cursed anew for blowing easy election victories in Iowa and North Carolina, respectively, that could have given the Democrats two extra Senate seats.  (Both Iowa and North Carolina have Senate seats up for re-election again in 2022; neither Greenfield nor Cunningham even bothered to try to run for the Senate again.)  But even if Sinema signs off on it, it faces opposition in the House of Representatives - not from the much-hated Squad but from moderate Democrats from California and the Northeastern states, who want the state-and-local-tax $10,000 deduction cap removed.  The reconciliation bill does not include that.

Because the Democrats have a slim majority in the House and a 50-50 split in the Senate, they'd be best off accepting this compromise.  If they don't, it's only going to make their already difficult task of maintaining their holds on both congressional chambers harder.  And rejecting this compromise would only further drive down Biden's approval ratings.

And yet, he might get a bump if all of this continues to work out, proving that his persistence at getting anything done is paying off.  But yes, I still think it.  I don't want Biden to run again.  Democrats  need new leadership.

I wonder if you all know what I'm talking about? 😉 

King Coal

Any chance of getting a climate package through Congress this year is probably dead.   Any chance of getting a climate package through Congress next year or in 2024 is probably dead as well, because the House will likely be under Republican control and will likely impeach Joe Biden while investigating Hunter Biden rather than doing anything about a problem they believe is a hoax.

As usual, everyone's favorite Republican, West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, is the reason for it.  Manchin has said he won't support the climate package because the cost will add to inflationary pressures but added he'd likely support it later after reviewing the cost factors.  The real reason, most likely, is depicted in the picture below.

Coal.  West Virginia produces a lot of it.  Joe Manchin is heavily invested in it.  Need I say more?

What's the matter with Manchin, anyway?  The West is in its worst drought in twelve centuries.  Europe is undergoing its fourth major heat wave in as many years - including Britain, where a heat wave is usually considered a stretch of days of 79 degrees Fahrenheit - while Paris may not be burning but the forests in France are. Parts of China are over 100, while other parts of China are.

Of course, Manchin is 74 and so won't live to see the worst effects of climate change, and those effects, ironically, are the reason his grandchildren might not live as long as he. 😠

Distant Early Warning

The New York Times has reported that the Biden White House received warnings from pollsters as far back as five or six months ago that concerns over inflation, immigration and crime needed to be dealt with, but the Biden administration chose to concentrate on its Build Back Better initiative.  But as long as that well-known West Virginia Republican, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, was not going to support Build Back Better, President Biden's poll numbers were only going to go from bad to worse.

Now it's May, the midterms are only six months or so away, an the President is trying to play catch-up with issues the voters care about rather than try to push child care, the environment, or prescription drug prices, which, if you believe the Republican Party, voters couldn't care less about.  It may already be too late for that. Antipathy toward the Biden administration appears to be set like concrete, and the Republicans are so heavily favored to win the midterms that the actual election may just be a formality (provided any Democratic voters are actually allowed to cast ballots).    

I'm pretty much resigned to seeing a Republican congressional takeover in 2022 and possibly a Republican presidential victory in 2024.  The GOP has been able to figure out how to manipulate the system to win all the power in Washington.  After that's it's one crisis away from a declaration of martial law the dissolves the Democratic Party in a case of what some progressives might call euthanasia.  And though Manchin may be responsible for stymieing Build back Better and voting-rights legislation by stabbing Biden in the back, he may yet get his.  After all, we remember what happened to Judas after he got his thirty pieces of silver.

(As all this goes on, the U.S. Senate Republican primary in Ohio will decide today who goes up against Democrat Tim Ryan for Rob Portman's Senate seat in November.  "Hillbilly Elegy" author and front-running primary candidate J.D. Vance, who once despised Donald Trump but later sucked up to him and got his endorsement over rival Josh Mandel, could be a formidable nominee against Ryan, a true champion of the working class.  I'm hoping that the GOP nominated whomever Ryan can defeat with little or no effort.  I just don't know who that would be.)

Vote Out

President Biden and the Democrats are likely to face a final defeat of the voting-rights legislation in the Senate tomorrow, and all indications are that Biden's incendiary speech in Atlanta about the need to pass the legislation satisfied few people - and those few are in no position to do anything about it.

The speech was primarily aimed at Democratic Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, to get them to change their minds about offering a carve-out for the filibuster to allow these bills to pass, or at least reform the filibuster to force senators who use the practice to talk for hours rather than just put a block on it.  They're not budging.  Biden couldn't even satisfy voting rights activists with his speech because he didn't have a plan to back up his efforts to get the legislation passed - he was winging it, improvising as he went along.  All Biden did was offend the two senators in question for suggestion comparison  between them and Jefferson Davis or George Wallace, and his efforts to change their minds in private conversations yielded nothing.

So what's left?  Just what Biden's efforts yielded.  Nothing.  Democrats will try to push the legislation and get nowhere due to Republican opposition, and when they try to make an issue out of voting rights in the midterm election campaigns, they'll realize too late that inflation and possibly the pandemic will continue to be he dominating issues of 2022 - and the country can't seem to get beyond either.  Look for the Republicans to take over both houses of Congress in the midterms and see them investigate Biden all the way through 2023 and 2024 while voting rights are chipped away even more in the states - and by the way, the voting-rights legislation the Democrats have offered does little if anything to regulate the counting of the votes, and the Republicans will likely use laws allowing them to nullify results in different states  to win back the White House . . . possibly with Trump at the head of the ticket. 

And then 45 will become 47 when he takes the oath of office on January 20, 2025, which will be the third Monday in January that year.  That is, Martin Luther King Day.

Oh, the irony!

Progressives will not give President Biden any credit for trying as hard as he could to get voting-rights legislation passed.  Because progressives pretty much follow Yoda's maxim: Do or don't do.  There is no "try."

Joe Manchin, The Grim Reaper

After months of the Biden administration attempting to negotiate with U.S, Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) over the Build Back Better bill, Manchin announced yesterday that he will vote no on the bill, dooming it to a 51-49 defeat, because nothing that President Biden could offer could make him a "yes" vote.

You know what this means?  This means that Biden will lose support among progressives for having let them down when he said he could get Manchin to vote for it.  The Republicans will take over the House and possibly the Senate in the 2022 midterms, and just like in the third year of the Clinton and Obama administrations, Congress's chief priorities will be low taxes, small government, and a complete disregard for anything else.  Anything else will include everything in the Build Back Better bill.  Then, in 2024, the Democratic presidential candidate - maybe Biden, maybe someone else - will win but the election will be stolen through a series of voting restrictions and uncounted votes in swing states.  And then in 2025, Donald Trump will assume power, declare martial law, and have members of the Squad fitted for orange jump suits.   

But hey, we got the hard-infrastructure bill passed, right?    

The only modicum of hope I can find in Manchin's statement is that Congress could prioritize elements of the Build Back Better bill that could be funded for ten years, which Manchin had suggested, and try to pass them piecemeal with Manchin's support.  Except that the White House thought they had a deal with Manchin as recently as last week, and right now they're in no mood to deal with him.  Hopefully President Biden will take time off during the holiday and cool his jets before re-engaging with the wily West Virginian.

Those who bitch about how the White House and congressional leaders should not have decoupled the hard-infrastructure bill from Build Back Better ought to remember that Manchin had always been opposed to passing a large bill such as Build Back Better through reconciliation and that his opposition would have sunk the hard-infrastructure bill as well.  Joe Manchin simply cannot be trusted to back anything that President Biden supports.   

Prepare for worse to come in the new year.

Feeling The Heat

Democrats are in trouble.  Real trouble.  And so is the planet.

U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (below), who represents West Virginia - a coal-producing state - objects to President Biden's Clean Energy Performance Program, which gives incentives to utilities to provide more clean energy to its customers.  Manchin has argued that the market is already incentivizing clean energy because of steadily increasing demand for wind and solar power.  Such a position would have more resonance and credibility if it came from a lawmaker who wasn't bringing in contributions from the fossil-fuel industry. 

Manchin's opposition could mean that the President's infrastructure plan could fail completely if progressives don't want to vote for an infrastructure package without something related to fighting climate change.  But it's not just progressives; it's virtually the entire Democratic .Party that wants this climate provision, and for all I know, that might even include Arizona Democratic senator Kyrsten Sinema.  I think a lot of the criticisms of Senate procedure are overblown, given that the reason we have a Senate is to allow more deliberation on legislation and to balance the interests of the small-population states against those of the large-population states, but the Senate was never meant to allow for one member to kill a legislative provision that the entire majority caucus - or, in increasingly rare bipartisan circumstances, the entire chamber - wants.

On the bright side, President Biden has vowed to move ahead with plans to build offshore wind farms up and down the East Coast, which can hopefully get underway before a possible Republican administration taking office in 2025 gets a chance to to stop them.  But Manchin's action on the eve of an important climate summit in Scotland is nothing sort of an atrocity.

President Biden has signaled optimism that he can get passed later what he can't get passed now, but that seems unlikely during the 2022 midterm election campaign season and downright impossible in the coming 118th Congress in which Republicans will likely control one of both chambers of Congress before striking the final blow against our democratic two-party system in 2024.   I can't think of a worse time for progress in These States than now.

Until tomorrow.

Biden At Rock Bottom

And if the bedrock erodes, he could sink lower.

This is a disastrous time for President Biden, the Democrats and the nation.  The President is still reeling from bad foreign policy decisions he made over the summer, the Democratic Congress won't give him any relief in the form of infrastructure bills he can sign into law, and COVID continues to plague the country.  Democrats don't blame Republicans entirely for COVID either; they cite the administration's CDC guidelines as being too confusing and incomprehensible, and the administration has only just begun straightening out the booster mess it created for itself by having a start date for boosters that contradicted scientific reality.

I am extremely pessimistic.  Because while he's foundering, Donald Trump is convincing more and more Republicans that the Democrats did indeed steal the presidential election . . . and conspiracy theories about things such as the election, COVID, and left-wing terror groups are multiplying faster than rabbits.  Let me put it this way: This time in 1993 and in 2009, I was relieved to be living in an America where a Democrat was President and in which Democrats controlled Congress, we had just put a bad President named George Bush behind us, and the future looked bright, with a renewed interest in public policies that would make America a country worth living in.  This time now, I'm scared stiff about the future.  I'm anticipating a takeover of state and local offices by Trump supporters in the the off-year and midterm elections to come, the rigging of the electoral process to pave the way for a Trump comeback in 2024 and a final conflict between Trump and the Democratic presidential nominee (who may or may not be Biden) that will result in 45 (Trump was the 45th President) becoming 47 and our civil and constitutional rights being eighty-sixed.  But then Bill Clinton and Barack Obama didn't have to contend with twin crises like a pandemic and a alt-right movement.  Biden should be able to deal with both, but so far he's proven himself to be a late-twentieth-century man operating in an early-twenty-first century world. 

There's still time for President Biden to recover, though.  In fact, his recovery may have already begun and we don't know it yet.  Afghanistan is slowly receding from the news while the Biden administration continues diligently to get more Americans and Afghan allies out of that country.  The dustup with France over U.S. nuclear-submarine sales to Australia has been settled - "a misunderstanding among friends," as Napoleon once described tense U.S.-French relations during the Presidency of John Adams.  The Delta COVID variant is receding as more people get vaccinated.  (The jury's out on the immigration issue, though.)  Meanwhile, the January 6 select committee is finally showing some backbone - more on that later.  The big question mark is whether the President can get congressional Democrats to pass both of his infrastructure bills before the year is out and also get voting rights legislation meant to prevent a Republican rigging of the system passed as well.  And both of those tasks rest in the hands of West Virginia senator Joe Manchin (below), who balks at more spending on social programs but is pushing a voting-rights bill that he thinks he can get passed without having to abolish the filibuster.

See why I'm pessimistic?

Hopefully, Manchin will come to his senses soon enough.  And while I'm not going to say that I have a feeling he will - there's nothing to suggest that as of yet - the nightmare scenario that brings about second Trump Presidency and puts the workings of government in the hands of a reactionary cadre of white supremacists and unindicted insurrectionists should move him at least a millimeter tor two.  I just hope it won't be too late when it does. 

Hitting The Ceiling

Well, the debt ceiling has been temporarily raised through early December, so a crisis has been avoided . . . for now. And the anger Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer showed toward Senate Republicans for delaying it for as long as they did was all too obvious.

After Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell allowed the vote on the debt ceiling to go through, Schumer excoriated the GOP for letting the crisis go so far.  It was the right speech at the wrong time.  It was too sensitive a moment for such a speech.  All he did was anger McConnell and made him much less likely to step in when the debt ceiling needs to be raised again.  Jesus didn't weep.  But Joe Manchin did.

"Poisoning the well" is too mild a metaphor for what just went down this past week.

The Democrats will likely have to raise the debt ceiling through reconciliation, which will mean that they will have to set a specific number that the Republicans will force them to defend in a midterm election campaign that will focus on too much government spending.  This may be a neutral issue if the Democrats can pass President Biden's "Build Back Better" program - but that's a big "if" . . . and time is running out.

And a continuing resolution has to be passed to fund the government at the same time the debt ceiling has to be raised again.

I'm not optimistic.

Voting Rights Blues

I loved President Biden's speech urging action to stop the Republicans from chipping away at voting rights.  The only problem was that he can't do anything about it.  Listening to his speech was like looking at a Maserati and knowing you'll never get to drive it.

Pressure on Democratic West Virginia senator Joe Manchin to allow the filibuster to be overruled on at least voting-rights legislation continues, as Representative James Clyburn (D-SC) is hoping for, but it's making as much progress as the COVID vaccination rate in this country.  That is, progress so incremental it hardly matters.  The only way Texas Democrats can keep the restricting voting rights bill in that state from passing is if they stay in Washington D.C. for another year.  And with COVID travel restrictions and lockdowns likely due to be imposed any day now, along with some of these Texas Democrats having come down with COVID despite being vaccinated, they just might be able to do that!

Meanwhile, Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been holding her committee's hearings in Georgia to shed light on that state's new voting restrictions.  Hardly surprisingly, Republican members of the committee, including former and future Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have been boycotting the hearings.  They just don't want to . . . hear it.

As always, if Democrats have any hope of maintaining control of Congress in the 2022 midterms, they'll have to work with what they have and educate their base on navigating all of these new voting restrictions, which President Biden thinks is doable - though he may end up being in a minority of one on that.  It would be ironic if, in the 2024 congressional elections, Senator Manchin loses his seat in West Virginia due to new voting restrictions in his state.   

Throw Out the Vote

You knew it was going to happen. Senate Democrats brought up the sweeping election reform bill passed by the House, and Senate Republicans blocked the upper house from even debating it, never mind voting on it.  Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell charged that it would federalize elections and take power away from the states to run elections.  He's right.  And that's exactly why you should support voting reform.  Because, with fourteen states having passed severe voting restrictions, particularly in Republican states where Republicans almost lost key Senate and presidential-elector elections, to make damn sure that never happens again, the states (at least Republican states) can't be trusted to run elections. And Congress is clearly within its bounds constitutionally to set guidelines for how states run elections.

To be fair, the "For the People" Act, as written, was probably too sweeping and too constitutionally dubious to pass muster with the courts.  But the GOP won't even consider West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin's compromise proposal , which would allow for voter ID and require no more than a utility bill but also allow fifteen days of early voting and eliminate partisan gerrymandering.  But then, Stacy Abrams, quickly replacing Nancy Pelosi as the national bogeywoman, said something that convinced Republicans to be against it.  She said she was for it.

There might be a way to convince Manchin to weaken the filibuster enough to allow an exception for voter laws, just as there might be a way to convince Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) to endorse climate-change legislation.  Manchin was actually for filibuster reform when he first joined the Senate back in 2011, but he's long since changed his mind about that.  Six years in the minority will do that to you.  For now, therefore, voter reform legislation is on the back burner, but Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer has made it clear that it's not off the stove.

"Make no mistake about it, it will not be the last time voting rights comes up for a debate in the Senate," Schumer, above, said.  "We have several serious options for how to reconsider this issue and advance legislation to combat voter suppression. We are going to explore every last one of our options."  

They'd better.  And it's worth noting that will the bill up for no debate ensures the casting of a ballot, it said little if anything about making sure that ballots are counted.  Some states are already setting things up so that legally cast votes can be thrown out by partisan poll oversight boards based on the mere suspicion of fraud however unfounded.  This could allow the Republicans to steal enough seats to win both houses of Congress in 2022 and overturn popular majorities for the Democratic presidential ticket in 2024.  And if that happens . . . well, it's one giant leap to authoritarianism.

*

P.S.  It has since been reported that Donald Trump wanted to send Americans living or traveling abroad infected by COVID to Guantanamo Bay to keep the case numbers down early in the pandemic.  The next Republican President - who could be named Donald Trump, and not necessarily the one who just left the White House - could, once installed in the White House in a fraudulent election, use an emergency similar to COVID to have a law expanding his powers passed and use it to shut down opposition parties and CNN.

And after that, the only question about the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers will be which group will be nationalized into our new secret police. 😠

Bipartisanship?

It seems that the war against voting is over, and voting lost . . . after Joe Manchin dropped the big one.

Manchin, a moderate Democrat from West Virginia who has enormous power - something that might not have happened if North Carolina Democratic Senate candidate Cal Cunningham hadn't been caught sexting and the party had a 51-49 majority in the Senate - ruled out voting for the voting rights bill the House passed, called the For the People Act.  He argues that the bill politicizes voting just like the Republicans have been doing so in the states.  Also, he's not going to support ending the filibuster in the Senate.

So that's it, right?  Joe Biden is not only going to be a one-term President, he's going to be a half-term President once the Republicans take back Congress in 2022?

Time out, people.  Manchin never said he's against bills that protect voting rights.  He's just against this one.  I don't profess to be an expert on voting rights legislation, but I understand that the arguments against it are that it does little to end gerrymandering and even less to stop partisan officials from hijacking the vote count and throwing out results they don't like.  Rather, Manchin's hoping to gain support for the less comprehensive but still effective John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would restore the 1965 Voting Rights Act and allow the federal government to oversee changes in state voting laws.  He and his fellow senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, are working to get that passed.  (I'm not going any deeper into the intricacies of either bill, because that's above my pay grade.)

As for eliminating the filibuster, Manchin may be right about keeping it, because without the filibuster, a Republican majority could bass bad legislation in the Senate quite simply under a Republican President ready, willing and able to sign it.  And if the Republicans deny President Biden a comprehensive infrastructure bill or two-time him by agreeing to a deal on infrastructure and then stopping it, then and only then would Manchin be likely to enable it to pass through reconciliation.  But he'd still keep the filibuster.   

As for how President Biden's agenda moves forward, we'll see what happens.  But it looks like Manchin's fingerprints will be all over it.     

As for the President's negotiations with Senator Shelly Moore Capito (R-WV) on the infrastructure bill, well, I think he's negotiating with the wrong West Virginia senator. 

Filibluster

Joe and Joe, President Biden and Senator Manchin, have both expressed opposition to getting rid of the Senate filibuster, much to the chagrin of House progressives.  Both President Biden and Senator Manchin believe that the filibuster is the only tool the minority has in the Senate to demand changes to a bill they want more input on or to block a law they do not like.  The whole purpose of the Senate, after all, is to modify or "cool down" the passions of legislation passed by the House, as well as give small states an equal say in the Senate that they don't have in the House.  President Biden and Senator Manchin also concerned with the possibility of a future Republican Senate majority - possibly as soon as the next Congress - setting the agenda and passing everything they damn well please withut a Democratic filibuster to stop them.

Both President Biden and Senator Manchin do agree that the filibuster should be reformed, however, and political scientist Norman Ornstein has come up with a few ideas for that, such as having more senators present when one senator is babbling on and on and forcing them to listen to the babbling, requiring a supermajority of those present instead of all 100 senators, and a smaller required majority to begin with.  (His ideas are in greater detail here.)  Filibuster reform might come sooner than later if Republicans insist on filibustering everything President Biden tries to get passed.

That's not enough for some senators, who want the filibuster ended entirely.  And members of the Squad certainly would love to see the filibuster - not to mention the current Senate parliamentarian - done away with.  Forget for a moment that the Squad are a bunch of know-it-all House members who have nothing to do with the Senate.  They also happen to be lawmakers who never served under a Republican majority.  I don't suggest that they serve in a Republican Senate to understand the value of keeping the filibuster in some form in place.  I merely note that they haven't.  

Manchin On the Hill

Everything looked good for President Biden's COVID relief bill passing despite Republican opposition and obstruction.  Then Joe Manchin, the Democratic U.S. Senator from West Virginia, almost screwed up everything.

Manchin (above), balked at a Democratic deal to give an extra $300 a week through September to the unemployed with $10,200 of unemployment benefit s tax-free.  Then Manchin, who apparently wasn't privy to the deal, said he liked the proposal by Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio to just give an additional $300 per week to the unemployed only through July - without one cent being tax-free.  

It's the tax-free provisions in the Democratic proposal that Manchin had a problem with.

So why not go along with Manchin and the Senate Republican caucus and just stick with the Portman plan?  Only a two-month difference, and it would make the bill bipartisan!  Because it would have made the bill a sham, because it would have gutted the effort to fortify unemployment benefits, and also because congressional Democrats hate the idea of selling their constituents down the river just for a deal to keep one of their own on board - and for progressive congressional Democrats, that goes double.

Fortunately, an agreement was reached that spared the Democrats from a major disaster.  The Democrats announced that they now plan to extend unemployment insurance program through September 6 at a rate of $300 per week with the $10,200 tax-free figure in benefits pertaining only to households making less than $150,000.  Manchin obviously didn't want to be the Democratic senator who blew up President Biden's legislation and subsequently is Presidency.  But his stand on this and other issues mean that, as long as the Senate is split 50-50 - likely until January 2023 - Manchin is the most powerful U.S. Senator in Washington.  His vote alone can make or break a Democratic initiative.

That's either reassuring or frightening, depending on where you stand. 

With Opponents Like These . . .

Former Republican senator Mel Martinez of Florida has admitted recently that he would prefer that the Republicans don't win back the Senate this year because, whereas the GOP is expected to take over the House, they would only share blame with the Democrats for an economy that's unlikely to get better any time soon if the Democrats were to keep control of the Senate. If they win everything, Martinez argued, the Republicans would be held accountable for everything. Perhaps that's why Republicans who are in a good position to win key Senate races are either saying stupid things or allowing stupid things they've done to resurface, thus blowing their chances.

Cases in point: West Virginia and Colorado. With a possible victory in his grasp in his bid to win the late Robert Byrd's Senate seat, West Virginia Republican candidate John Raese, vying to become the first Republican senator elected from the Mountain State since the fifties, told ABC News that the minimum wage is an archaic form of government control of the free market and should be abolished.

Joe Manchin, the Democratic governor of West Virginia opposing Raese in the special Senate election, has been given a wonderful gift in this culturally conservative but highly unionized state. Many West Virginia voters have been encouraged to vote for Raese and keep Manchin as governor rather than give President Obama - deeply unpopular in the Mountain State - another vote for his economic agenda. Now they just might want that vote to preserve their jobs and federally guaranteed wages. Rease - who is legally a West Virginia resident but spends much of his time in Florida - is so out of touch he boasts how he made his money the old fashioned way by inheriting it. Well, the wealthy steel and limestone tycoon clearly didn't earn it like Smith Barney. (If the name sounds familiar to some West Virginians, it may be because he ran against Jay Rockefeller for the state's other Senate seat in 1984 but lost to Rockefeller - then the state's governor - despite Ronald Reagan's re-election landslide that year.)

Meanwhile, appointed Democratic senator Michael Bennet in Colorado is fighting for a term in his own right and his political life against Tea Party Republican Ken Buck, and has been slipping badly, but a chapter in Buck's past has come back to haunt him. It appears that when he was the district attorney for Weld County in 2005, Buck refused to look into an allegation of rape because the woman who made the claim did not have proof beyond a reasonable doubt He could have stopped there, but the woman, it turns out, secretly taped a meeting with Buck in which he explained another reason for not pursuing the case. "It appears to me," Buck said, "that you invited him over to have sex with him."

This is redolent of Jeremiah Denton, the one-term Republican senator from Alabama in the 1980s, who objected to prosecuting a man accused of raping his wife because when women get married, they have to expect they're going to get a little sex. In fact, it's just plain redolent. Buck is known for his misogynistic attitude; he once said he'd make a better candidate than his female competitor for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination because he didn't "wear high heels."

Buck leads Bennet by five points overall but trails badly among women. I understand that Michelle Obama is going to campaign for Democrats to help get out the women's vote. She should go to Colorado. She doesn't even have to mention the rape controversy. She just has to go there.

Plan B

The Republicans think they might have an opportunity to win control of the Senate by picking up two Democratic seats - neither of which should ever have been in play. One is a seat the Democrats were expected to hold easily. The other is a seat that is only up for election through because a twist of fate and bad timing.

As noted here yesterday, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is ahead of his Republican opponent for the U.S. Senate, noted drug-pushing violence peddler Linda McMahon, by only three percentage points. Factoring in other polls and computing the averages makes the situation look better for Blumenthal - but not much better. How did this happen? Conventional wisdom suggests that Blumenthal was been hobbled by his misstatements about his Vietnam-era military service. But Blumenthal actually survived that; most Connecticut voters accepted his explanation. (As I noted, it was clear to anyone paying attention that he was speaking in general terms about his and other people's military service in the Vietnam era.) What's hobbling him is a twofold problem. One, McMahon is outspending him and outshining him; she has more money to invest in her campaign and you see her more often in TV ads. Blumenthal is practically a nonentity on television. Two, he's connected with the Democrats and the status quo at a time when many voters in Connecticut and elsewhere in the nation are not so much infatuated with either. One thing about the McMahon campaign that appears to be resonating with voters is that career politicians like Blumenthal are part of the problem and that outsiders have new ideas.

Yes, but a drug-pushing violence peddler? A woman who makes her living having "wrestlers" pretend to bludgeon each other within inches of their lives?

If Blumenthal had deliberately misled voters about his Vietnam-era record, his war stories would be more believable than Linda McMahon's events.

Since Connecticut is regarded as a preppie state, Linda McMahon has high negatives among its voters. But Blumenthal hasn't been much of a candidate; he's almost Martha Coakley (who?) in a suit and tie. He needs to get it in gear.

Meanwhile, in West Virginia, Robert Byrd's seat ended up open to a special election because Byrd died a week before holding such an election would not have been necessary under West Virginia law; an appointed senator would have been able to fill out the entire term. Governor Joe Manchin could have avoided calling a special election on a technicality. See my post from June 28, 2010 explaining it in detail.) Manchin preferred to appoint an interim senator, call a special election, and announced his candidacy for the seat. It was a risk, but one Manchin was willing to take. An election was in fact warranted, and Manchin, who wants the seat, would run for it in a fair and open contest that he expected to win due to his popularity as governor.

But, as reported last week, Republican John Raese has made it a race, running strongly against Manchin. Manchin is still popular, but many West Virginians disapprove of President Obama and his policies and would prefer not to reward him with a senator that would keep the Democrats in control of the Senate. And, by voting for Raese, they can keep the popular Manchin as governor through early 2013.

Manchin hasn't lost yet, though, and he's stepped up his campaign by highlighting his differences with Obama to demonstrate his Independence. (It's a shame that a U.S. Senate candidate has to distance himself from his President, but that's the Democratic party for you.) Plus, there's the problem of Raese's official residence. He's legally a West Viriginia resident but he lives most of the time in Florida. Sounds like someone who likes to have it both ways, if you ask me.

What's my prediction? My gut tells me that Blumenthal will pull through in Connecticut - and he would have been far better off if he'd read my blog and taken my advice on a statewide bus tour. How hard would it be to tour a state of four million people sixty miles wide and ninety miles across? As for West Virginia, I have no idea how that's going to turn out. My knowledge of the state is restricted to a John Denver song and a visit to Harpers Ferry. I wouldn't advice Manchin to take a bus tour, though; the terrain will do a number on the transmission. I would, however, advise him to go to mountains that have had their tops blown off by greedy coal companies to show folks the kind of environmental policies Raese would support as a senator.

The GOP's Plan B to take over the Senate may be blunted elsewhere, though. In Kentucky, Republican Rand Paul is suddenly facing a late surge from Democrat Jack Conway. In Colorado, Democrat Michael Bennet has come out stronger against Tea Party Republican Ken Buck. These were seats Republicans were favored to win not too long ago. Polls now show the Democrats running stronger overall in the congressional midterm elections, in both houses. Can the GOP tide by stemmed if not stopped? I hope so.